Gaming some flashing questions

[MFDC12]

last year i sent my xbox to get modded, it was a liteon (i think the oldest liteon, i got in dec 08, manufacture was july 08). so he flashed with ixtreme 1.6. it works fine, its just tiring to use activate.iso every time i play new games. so my birthday is coming up, and instead of spending money to ship it away, i think i will use the $40 to buy the Xecuter CK3 Pro (Rev D). however, i have a few questions.

a) Laptop.
ive searched alot about this but no clear answer (its always yes/no). i have an esata port, cpuz shows a the south bridge is Intel 82801IM (ich9-m), which i have looked and said that jungleflasher was compatible. i mean, if its not, no biggie, just will buy a expresscard sata thats compatible.
anyways, i can hook it up to there that way, correct? with an esata->sata?

b) keys
the guy i sent it in to did not do a full dump (a dump with laser calibration data). he sent me the key file for backup purposes (just incase he loses it). will this have a problem upgrading to lt?

c) actual flashing
i will not have to use a probe or anything will i, or have to install the lt switch? i have a key files.

i was thinking, if not having laser calibration data would be a problem, i would buy a benq drive and swap it with my keys (that IS possible, right?), though i do not want to do that if i do not have to.

 

[FAST6191]

I assume this is an offline machine.
If you are upgrading then go to 1.6NS ( http://www.xboxhacker.org/index.php?topic=13383.0 ) rather than LT as 1.6 NS acts like a built in activate.iso which is great. If you have used activate.iso you are almost certainly past the point of JTAG but have a read of this just to make sure: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dnfmv5h_186pp2zddm as JTAG machines are awesome.

If you are only doing the one drive (or a handful) then you can avoid buying the xecuter as well- just power it from a 360 and remember to use a grounding strap (electrically connect the laptop and the 360 metal shell).

On the matter of the laptop if you have keys you lose nothing by trying (worst case scenario you have to open the drive and hit the manual eject bar to set it into flashing mode if you get as far as erasing it- the only drives you can brick by flashing are the hitachi drives); liteons are not as fussy as older drives when it comes to a chipset.
There is a PCMCIA/express card VIA 6421 (the works every time chipset as far as matters 360 are concerned) but I do not know much about them as they are quite expensive vs the PCI variety and most people who head down this path have or can borrow a desktop for long enough to do this.

The laser calibration data is overrated (scan any 360 forum that deals in this- if it was a problem there would be more hits for it) not to mention it is now gone for your drive.

Yes the keys alone will be enough and no need for a probe is needed if you are just upgrading, indeed even if you did not have the keys the hacked firmwares will spit them out if you ask.

Yes you can spoof another drive although as you hope there is no point.

 

[MFDC12]

well, i do use live occasionally, mostly to get dlc and update my gamer score. eventually (if i never get banned), i do want to get gold live though. i am indeed past jtag

so what you are saying, just get a sata->esata and not get the xecuter, and try it from there?

i do have a desktop, but its not hooked up anymore, it is very old though. i can probably borrow my friends though

thanks

edit:
how would you make a grounding strap, or did i misunderstand you?

 

[FAST6191]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

If you are using live at all then you need to use LT, trouble is many of your old burned games might not work (LT requires them to use splitvid which has been around for ages but is not standard/required by the scene prior to LT and a whole bunch of other things are wise to do- we had a thread on the subject a little while back http://gbatemp.net/t233799-checking-games-safety-online ). You probably missed the last banwave by being offline for the banning phase but I would not rate your chances of surviving the new one.

The grounding strap is just a wire (I have a bit of solder in the past, a bit of foil and others have just sat the 360 metal case next the PC) or something to electrically connect the 360 case to the PC case.
It is done as the 360 uses a floating ground and the PC uses a true earth (or whatever your house passes off as earth) and this can mean a nice voltage difference (mains voltage difference) between the 360 and PC which tends to cook components. It will not happen all of the time or even most of it but for the sake of a cent worth of some electrical connector people do it.

If you want though you can also make your own power device- http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=668247 but that is not really necessary for this gig.

 

[MFDC12]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

If you are using live at all then you need to use LT, trouble is many of your old burned games might not work (LT requires them to use splitvid which has been around for ages but is not standard/required by the scene prior to LT and a whole bunch of other things are wise to do- we had a thread on the subject a little while back http://gbatemp.net/t233799-checking-games-safety-online ). You probably missed the last banwave by being offline for the banning phase but I would not rate your chances of surviving the new one.

The grounding strap is just a wire (I have a bit of solder in the past, a bit of foil and others have just sat the 360 metal case next the PC) or something to electrically connect the 360 case to the PC case.
It is done as the 360 uses a floating ground and the PC uses a true earth (or whatever your house passes off as earth) and this can mean a nice voltage difference (mains voltage difference) between the 360 and PC which tends to cook components. It will not happen all of the time or even most of it but for the sake of a cent worth of some electrical connector people do it.

If you want though you can also make your own power device- http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=668247 but that is not really necessary for this gig.

hm, so i might need to reburn some games? alrighty, though i think i had done the splitvid thing, but ill check. would verifying via disk in agbx360 be able to tell me if i need to reburn?

also, ordered a sata cable and an unlock tool so everything should come sometime this week

edit:
so the process is, for me:
open xbox
ground it
power on 360, connect to laptop
open jungleflasher (in the safe mode)
in the firmware 32 tab, open source fw (dummy.bin?)
open target firmware, liteon lt
open halfway, flash
is that it?

 

[FAST6191]

Yeah ABGX360 will tell you if your burned discs are still good to go.

As for what you want to do
You still have the original firmware so you might as well make the firmware beforehand (you can do it now if you want)
Other than that you will have to press the spoof source to target button, save the new hacked firmware to a file (preferably then email it to yourself/otherwise back it up).
After that it is just a matter of connecting the drive (plus ground the 360 case) in half open mode (it is probably easier to pull the 360 power out at the wall rather than hope the button works in time), my general rule of thumb for these drives is about 1cm before it starts curving. Get it detected and take a screenshot (you mainly want the I/O address*).
If it is a liteon you will have to erase the eeprom first and power cycle it but that should be automatic/prompted with the later jungleflasher versions.

*once you erase it then it will not be detected like it was before until you flash something to it, having the I/O address helps somewhat with this process. You probably will not need it but it helps.

 

[MFDC12]

im a bit embarrassed to admit this, but i can successfully disassemble my 360, up until getting the back pins unclipped. i can sometimes hear a pop, and the other times i cant, and it does not lift up when i hear the pop. any thoughts or tips?

 

[FAST6191]

Step 1 is do not open the case up a lot at this point- just enough to get the hooks off and keep them off, you start holding it 30 odd degrees and it will be a nightmare.
After this poke a knife (I use a scalpel) in the holes while pushing the two halves apart (thumb and middle finger "crossed over" as it were in my case). You will hear a pop as each clip comes undone.

 

[MFDC12]

ok, got it open today. i got everything set up, liteon halfway mode powered by the xbox, though i have a problem. when the drive is connected (i can see it in the device manager), jungleflasher says no compnents were found, i click ok, and it will not open, it doesnt freeze. if i turn off the xbox, it will show up. it wont ever open with it connected, and ive googled and googled and cant figure out why. dosflash will not work either - it gets stuck on disabling the drives.

 

[Fudge]

I have a problem with my flashed Lite-On too. Got the infamous "Open Tray" error. Sending it back to the guy who flashed it for me tomorrow.

 

[MFDC12]

just wanted to say i solved it, and successfully flashed, thanks to someone in the jungleflasher support chat

the problem was i had installed win 7 with ahci enabled in my bios. what i did was resize my current partition, install win 7 with it disabled, dualbooting both, and it went ok, and now is lt


the only trouble im having now is putting it back together. the eject button no longer wants to click the button, though im too tired and ill deal it in the morning, though tips are appreciated so i dont have to scratch my head if it dont work

everything was put back together and now works. didnt have the top piece on which i realized was needed for the eject button to work. everything is running smoothly now

thank you very very very much, FAST6191, you were a huge help!